Workspace Group

We contribute to making London more sustainable
Workspace Group has always been supportive of the London Plan and in 2006 we set 2012 targets that were in line with its objectives. The draft replacement London Plan was released in October 2009, revealing the Mayor’s long term vision for London. We will review our 2012 targets in relation to the revised London Plan and will publish this review on our website.

Additionally we remain committed to continuing to work with our London property partners through the Better Building Partnership to further contribute to London’s ambitious environmental, social and economic goals.

Harry Platt CEO	Oversight of our sustainability programme.
Sustainability Committee Chaired by Angus Boag, Development Director	Meets on a quarterly basis to discuss the implementation of our strategy and identify opportunities. The Committee is formed by our target owners and reports to the Board on our progress.
Target owners	Responsibility for the implementation of our targets is defined at the beginning of each year and allocated to individual employees. They form part of our Sustainability Committee.

Our sustainability governance structure has proven efficient in driving the implementation of our targets and initiatives. It also empowers our employees to be involved and help develop our key strategy decisions with regard to future targets and initiatives.

We believe that sustainability needs to be at the core of how we shape our business strategy. In 2009, in addition to our quarterly Committee meetings, we dedicated a Board meeting to a discussion on future sustainability risks and opportunities and how this should impact on our business strategy. This was an opportunity to refine our key drivers and provide clear direction to our future sustainability strategy.

Looking back over the past year
In 2009, we set ourselves 10 targets aligned with our core business priorities.

We can now report that we fully achieved four of these targets and partially achieved a further three targets. We are pleased to report this progress and are continuing to work towards the achievement of all of our targets.

There are three targets that are considered not achieved. However, since the end of the financial year we have made progress against all three of these targets and expect to report their successful completion by December. There is a full breakdown of our progress against targets available on our website.

Most significant progress has been made in the areas of energy and waste, considered two of our most significant impacts across the portfolio. These targets cover over 100 properties where we have responsibility for energy and 70 properties where we have responsibility for waste management. We have successfully established a robust energy consumption monitoring system and are now able to state the carbon emissions associated with energy use across the property portfolio.

Scope	Carbon emissions (tonnes CO2e)
Scope 1 (fuel burned onsite at our properties)	20,137
Scope 2 (electricity purchased by Workspace
Group for our properties)	22,151

We are pleased to have achieved a significant improvement in the management of waste at many of our assets. We owe these achievements to the efforts and commitment of our onsite staff who strive to engage with our customers and implement simple measures that make the difference.

46% waste diverted from landfill
• We install extra recycling bins at strategic locations in the buildings;
• We engage with our customers;
• We communicate achievements through our newsletters;
• We put signage around the building.

Further performance data is available on our website.

Sustainability is part of everything we do
This year, we have achieved further success in making our own office a sustainable work environment. Not only does this help us reduce our operational costs, but it also helps us to identify how we can replicate best practice across our managed portfolio.

We are therefore pleased to report that we achieved a 7% reduction in our electricity use between 2009 and 2010 at our Head Office. We have also steadily reduced our annual water consumption over the same period, and show a 10% reduction in the last year.

Improving the sustainability of our Head Office has been achieved through changing simple habits. Here are some useful tips that we have applied:

• We display monthly energy graphs in common part areas;
• We have introduced waterless urinals, using eco-cubes. This has significantly reduced our water consumption.

2009/10 in a nutshell
May 2009	Our action plan to prepare for the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is launched.		Every quarter we achieve higher levels of coverage for carbon emissions database.
September 2009	We win the Bronze Award for the Mayor’s Green Procurement Code.		Winner for the second year running.
December 2009	We outperform our waste target of 35% of our waste being diverted from landfill.		46% of waste being diverted from landfill.
January 2010	As members of the Better Building Partnership, we support the launch of the BBP benchmarking guidance.		41 of our managed buildings are part of the initiative.
May 2010	Customer Satisfaction Survey.		81% of our customers express a high level of satisfaction.

Looking ahead
In the future, we will retain a set of targets around the four core priorities that we identified last year.

We also intend to run a pilot project that identifies specific opportunities to improve the sustainability performance of four specific assets across a range of indicators. We believe that in doing so, we will be able to identify innovative practices in a wide range of subjects and understand how we replicate best practice across our entire portfolio. As part of this project, we will explore how we can adapt our buildings to climate change impacts, how we can link the flexible use of our space to increased productivity and how we can provide our customers with the best conditions to grow in a sustainable manner.

Our 2010 targets are available on our website, www.workspacegroup.co.uk/sustainability.